IPL 2023: Did Kolkata make a mistake by not retaining Shubman Gill? KKR CEO breaks silence

IPL 2023: Gujarat Titans' Shubman Gill is one of the top cricketers who was surprisingly not retained by this then franchise, the Kolkata Knight Riders ahead of the Indian Premier League 2022 mega auctions. The youngster then went on and joined Hardik Pandya's Gujarat Titans, a team which was formed ahead of the 2022 IPL mega auctions. Interestingly, they went on to lift the IPL trophy in 2022. Following the title-winning season, Gill has continued to dominate world cricket and is being touted as a superstar in the making for team India and his frahnchise. 

Meanwhile, during an interactive session with media personnel recently, Kolkata Knight Riders CEO Venky Mysore opened up on the much-debated exit of Shubman Gill. Shedding light on the subject, the CEO mentioned that the franchise doesn’t regret letting go of the Punjab cricketer. He also claimed that the two-time IPL winning side is happy to see their players do well for other teams.

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"There is actually happiness when we see some of the players we have developed go to other franchises and do well. Shubman Gill is an example, the limitation as you know, the rules the IPL and BCCI make. In the 2022 auction, we were allowed to keep only four players. There's always a debate. There is always eight or nine whom we would like to keep, you had to select four out of those," Mysore told reporters during the Knight Golf event in Kolkata.

"It's never a regret"

"It's never a regret, and the decisions were made based on the set of information that was available at that point. We believe those were the right decisions we made, but it's always tough to lose some players," he added. Since winning the IPL trophy with GT last year, Gill has gone on to smash centuries for India across all three formats.

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Shubman Gill's illustrious journey in IPL so far

Gill’s journey in the marquee T20 league started in 2018 when KKR picked him on the back of a victorious U-19 World Cup-winning campaign. He played four full seasons with the team, scoring 1417 runs in 58 games. He then went on to hit 483 runs for Gujarat Titans in IPL 2022, scoring four half-centuries in the process.

He leads the run-scoring charts for GT in IPL 2023 with 333 runs to his name from eight games so far. In the process, Gill has already notched up three fifties. He is currently scoring at an average of 41.63 and a strike rate of 142.30.